In Episode 194 of Mother Earth News and Friends, we’re excited to be speaking with Summer Rayne Oakes, a science communicator, conservation activist, and entrepreneur. We’ll be discussing sustainability with Summer Rayne, including sourcing plants and mindful fashion, as well as some of the exciting projects she’s been involved in.
Scroll down for our episode transcript, and scroll to the bottom for our guest bio and show-note resources!
Transcript:
John Moore: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. In this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends, we’re so excited to be speaking with Summer Rayne Oakes, a science communicator, conservation activist, and entrepreneur. We’ll be discussing sustainability with Summer Rayne, as well as some of the exciting projects she’s been involved in.
This is Mother Earth News.
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[00:01:19] Introducing Summer Rayne Oakes
Kenny Coogan: Good day everyone, and we appreciate you for joining us on another exciting Mother Earth News and Friends podcast.
I am Kenny Coogan, and joining me today is Summer Rayne Oakes, a science communicator, conservation activist, and entrepreneur, working on creative solutions to environmental challenges. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we have been dedicated to conserving our planet’s natural resources, while helping you conserve your financial resources. Today we are going to discuss sustainability, including flowers, food, and fashion.
Summer Rayne started “Plant One On Me” back in February [00:02:00] 2017 to help answer houseplant care questions. Since that time, her YouTube channel has expanded in scope and depth, featuring regular episodes that share the beauty of plants with the people who love them. Her mission is to bring people closer to plants by bringing plants closer to them through engaging, entertaining, and educational content. Welcome to the podcast, Summer Rayne.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.
Kenny Coogan: So during the pandemic, I was either reminded or introduced to your Summer Rayne Oakes YouTube channel. It’s a botanical channel, which includes houseplant and gardening tips and botanical garden tours, and I found it so soothing during the pandemic. So thank you for that.
Summer Rayne Oakes: I’m glad, I’m glad. I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s it’s definitely a wonderful channel if you wanna like take garden tours or you wanna learn more about plants. And and you know, you, you feel like everything’s on YouTube. [00:03:00] But during the time when I had started that channel, there weren’t many people actually discussing. It started with house plants actually, but it’s expanded from there. And we often go out into the wild and see beautiful plants, or we’ll go to botanic gardens or we’ll do house plant home tours. So it’s, it’s very unique in that sense.
Kenny Coogan: And growing up, what attracted you to the wild and outdoors and nature?
Summer Rayne Oakes: Well, I think I grew up in the country, so I think it was just like second nature for growing up in that kind of environment. And I grew up on a, a five acre plot, but one of my aunts, like, and uncles, like owned a lot of the fields around us, which were actually like hay fields for cows. Or they’d run their horses and they’d have horse shows and things along those lines. So you know, even though it wasn’t all of our personal land, like the, the land extended it more into some of my family’s lands, and so I was really surrounded by like farms and fields and forest. And that was my backyard. And I really took to that. I really enjoyed it.
I started getting a lot of like Native American books [00:04:00] and medicinal plant books. My mom had this old like 1976, I think, guide on like Rodale Herb book. And I, I got really into that. And I started to like collect, you know, I started to press plants and collect bird feathers and identify bird feathers. And I’d have shoe boxes like under my bed of all these, like of a cache of, of plants or bird feathers or interesting stones, things along those lines.
So I think that, you know, I knew pretty early on that that was something that really fascinated me. And my parents, of course, like encouraged me. My, my dad and my mom were big gardeners as well. We had a little orchard growing up, so we grew a lot of our own food. We had a big like compost pile in the back. We had goats. We had chickens growing up. So for me it was, it was really idyllic.
I never thought of like actually living in the city. I lived in the city obviously for, for a, a bit of time and did a lot of work there. But I always kind of felt like I was gonna come back to the country because it was just like how I grew up, and it’s the [00:05:00] stuff that I really gravitated towards. So it’s, it come, it’s come full circle, I think now.
[00:05:06] Discovering the Activities You Love
Kenny Coogan: I’ve heard you say when you discovered a pressed flower in a book that you forgot you made months or years ago, it instantaneously transports you to a time and place you collected it. Why do you think it’s important for you or people or our society to return to simple and satisfying activities, such as pressing flowers?
Summer Rayne Oakes: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, it’s, some people have never had simple activities. I mean, it’s, it, it simple and, you know, activities out in nature, you know, that I grew up with. There’s a lot of folks who like grow up in the cities and don’t have that type of, activity, you know, would maybe even scoff at that type of activity.
But for me, growing up in like that kind of world and being, you know, kind of the millennial generation where you grew up without like cell phones and computers and that kind of stuff, but then were transported into that world, it’s like night and day. You grew up [00:06:00] with like a different kind of tempo.
Coming into the country, like I will not always have my phone on me. I’ll just be outside and it’ll just be a def, a different type of tempo. You have much more ability to be able to observe and sometimes the fine details, you’re in your own thoughts oftentimes, and I think that’s very uncomfortable for a lot of folks.
So doing things that are a bit more meditative. And I like to talk about things that are a bit more like a, a moving meditation. So not necessarily like meditation, where you’re like sitting isolated in a room with your own thoughts and your own self, and you’re trying to clear your mind. I, I find like a lot of the stuff that’s a moving meditation, whether it might be like doing like herbal wellness or pressing flowers or making observations like in collecting bird feathers or interesting things.
I like to collect nests like after the nesting season is done and you see all these different nests, like in the, the trees and stuff like that. Or you clean out the nest boxes [00:07:00] that you have around. Those things are kind of cool and you could really admire, like the detail and the craftsmanship that the birds had in order to be able to put together the, the nests.
Like, it’s just, it’s very charming. It’s like those activities that actually give you a sense of peace and a sense of calm that don’t necessarily always involve like your devices or being on the phone like 24/7 or being on the computer like 24/7 . Or watching the news, you know, like that could really kind of get you up into a tizzy or like be kind of fear-based and everything along those lines. I think things that are, that are a bit more, you know, productive and something that you enjoy, that you like to observe, like coming out of a place of love, I think is a much healthier way to be.
Kenny Coogan: And I imagine you see house plants and ornamental garden serving that same purpose.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Yeah, I love, I love gardening. I mean, the, being able to craft and create a garden or to actually transform your space, I think is really important. I mean, obviously like house plants [00:08:00] became very popular again. You know, it’s like, it’s, it’s like, it’s like a cycle, you know? Starting in around, I would say 2016, 2017, and then really picked up, obviously again, during the pandemic.
And by that time, there was already a huge, like, social media boom, like on places like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok that we’re supporting that. And so when the pandemic hit, I think that it actually just exploded even further, because now you got a lot of, a lot more younger people who are in, who are involved. Everybody was staying home. So, you know, people wanted to make their spaces and places better.
And I think that there was also this kind of, again, fear, which I don’t, I, I, you know, hate to look at fear as something that really drives people. It’s, it’s, it’s not a, I don’t think it’s a healthy place to be at. But a lot of people were like provoked in order to say, oh, well, maybe I should be growing my own food and all that other kind of stuff. But I’d rather, you know, see people want to grow their own food not out of place of fear, but out of a place of like, I’m interested in this. Sticking my [00:09:00] hands in soil is a, a space and a place that I wanna be in. It’s healthy for me.
And I think that’s the differentiation that I’d like to make, because I think even with a lot of like channels out there and all this kind of stuff, it’s, it’s really fear driven. And I think, in this world, in this news cycle, we have to be cognizant that that’s like a tactic that I think folks are using. But we should be instilling this type of activities out of place of like love and interest and intrigue and inspiration. And that’s kind of the tactic that I wanna take.
[00:09:36] Popularity of Houseplants and Non-Edible Plants
Kenny Coogan: Now, one of your youTube videos from about a year ago talked about popular house plants that you could get in the 18 1800s. Why do you think people have been interested in growing and cultivating non-edible plants for hundreds and thousands of years?
Summer Rayne Oakes: I think part of it is just because they’re so beautiful and, and the way that you actually feel around nature and wanting to bring [00:10:00] nature indoors is, is really important for folks.
As a kid, I would naturally like want to bring nature indoors and, you did that by creating like little dioramas. I encouraged my dad to help me build like a little indoor waterfall so I could raise aquatic insects and indoor and things like that. You wanna be closer to nature.
I mean, as a kid, my mom couldn’t get me in from outdoors. She would always be like, Summer, come in, the dinner is ready. And I just never really wanted to come in. That’s very rare, I think, for kids nowadays. Especially those that aren’t, you know, growing up in a very inspirational, like, piece of the, the world. Most of the time, parents fear for when you’re out on the street or something. Not, not in all places, but you know, it’s, it’s discouraging. It’s actually discouraging for a child growing up. So I think that having this sense of exploration, really rethinking about how we build things and how we design things [00:11:00] so that you have the opportunity to grow up in a positive environment. Or even if you’re older to age in a place well.
We’ve, we’ve been looking at a lot of land when we were looking for land to, to purchase, my friends and I. And you know, a lot of folks get older and they can’t take care of the land anymore. So the, there’s always like a question of like, how can you design something where you could age in place? As my father gets older, he’s looking at like, oh, I should have just had like one floor on, as a house. And that makes a lot of sense. And I don’t think, those are things that we actually think about. Where we live and how we live and how things are designed are really imperative. Being close to nature is really important.
I know how when I was living in Brooklyn full time and I had my house plants, like it just made me feel so much more relaxed. And I would invite people in my home for meditation purposes, and people would just automatically just feel immediately relaxed because it wasn’t just a sterile environment. It was like really full of life. You [00:12:00] could feel the humidity in the house, like it just was really lovely. And green is a relaxing color as well. And then, if you really get to know your plants and you start to learn the, the natural histories of them and everything along those lines, you become much more engaged with them as well. And you look at them way beyond like a decorative item.
Kenny Coogan: A couple of years ago you published a book, How to Make a Plant Love You: Cultivate Green Space in Your Home and Heart. And you wrote, “Becoming a good plant parent can radically open your mind.” So can you elaborate a little bit on that?
Summer Rayne Oakes: Again, this goes back to what I had just said about looking beyond your plants from a decorative standpoint.
A lot of folks, not that there’s anything super wrong with that. There’s some people who say, I wanna really pretty plant and I wanna put it right there, and then maybe it’ll die in like two months, and then I’ll get another plant and put it right there, because I want a plant right there. For folks who want to engage and realize that this, it’s a, like a living organism and [00:13:00] that it’s something that could not only add some, some beauty to your house, but you could become very familiar with it.
It’s like kind of getting to know a person. You find out like a lot of the plants that we grow indoors are not necessarily plants that I grew up with, not in, at least in the Northern hemisphere. A lot of our plants are subtropical or tropical varieties. And, and I don’t have a relationship with them in the same way that I might have like native plants that grow outside of my door in the Northern Hemisphere.
You actually then expand your worldview of like where these plants come from, the habitat that they had emerged from, and you begin to ask, start asking questions about like, not only what a plant could do for you, but what you could do for a plant and the, and making sure that it’s in the proper space and you give it the proper environment. And that you actually start to care for it. So as opposed to just looking as a decor piece that you’re going to change like in a hotel every five or six months, it’s actually something that may, might actually grow with you, grow old with [00:14:00] you, and that you could pass on generation to generation. Or you could take cuttings of. You learn how to propagate it. That starts to become a like really empowering. Same way that if like somebody puts, plants a tree in the ground and you see it like change over the course of time.
I revel in the fact that like every day is a completely new picture outdoors with the, with the garden. You’ll never see that same picture twice because it’s constantly changing. And if you start to observe like the subtleties of even your plants indoors, like the way that it maybe opens or closes or contorts towards the light, you know, it’s growth form, that type of stuff. Like it’s, it’s really wonderful. But you have to make time for it and you have to have space for it.
And that’s kind of what the subtitle of my book was, Cultivate Green Space in Your Home and Heart. And space for me was both a physical space, but also like a mental and a, a spiritual space. You have to create space. You have to make space for that in your, your [00:15:00] life, and it’s not just about having the space in your home.
[00:15:03] Accessibility Needs and Gardening
Kenny Coogan: Justice Green asks, “What resources or advice do you have for mobility challenged home gardeners? As a former gardener with mobility issues, I understand from the inside how great the impact is when you cannot do the things you are used to doing. Many people in my position are trapped in their homes for extended periods of time. Bringing a little bit of outside in could have a huge impact. Healthy air and food can extend someone’s life.”
Summer Rayne Oakes: Well, I’d say from a mobility standpoint, and obviously like mobility can mean many things. But I would say that you’re not disabled if you have an abled environment, right? And so the question is like, well, how do you already make an abled environment? Maybe it means that you don’t have to bend down or lift things or anything along those lines. So keeping things on the plane that you are able to work on, I think is really important so that you don’t have to get up or [00:16:00] down. And keeping things that are within reason that are not heavy, I would imagine.
So it’s not like you, you may be able to work with, for instance, like a large, huge terracotta, heavy pot, that type of thing. But maybe you have to make decisions of like working with something like a fiberglass pot or something that’s really lightweight, that still looks pretty and that could be easily liftable or that is on the plane that you’re working in.
I would also say that having kind of small bags of soil or something that you could scoop out. So if you get like small bags of soil and then you have like a large tote or something. I’ve seen this, which actually some of the, one of the houseplant home tours that I did with an older woman who’s actually no longer with us, unfortunately. And she had these large kind of stacker totes that she probably got from The Container Store, and then you could kind of pull out. And she’d have her soil, she’d have her Perlite there, so it was easy, easily accessible for her. And then she’d just have a scoop so she could scoop them out. And [00:17:00] actually make her own potting medium and plant up her pots very easily on a table and on a plane that works for her.
So I think that those are the things that you could think about. Same thing if you’re outdoors . I think a lot about aging in place, and probably more so than what I, you know, probably should be at my age. But I think that’s something that people start thinking about when it’s a little bit too late. But we, you know, built a really beautiful gazebo out in the, the landscape area. But I wanted high plant beds, and I wanted it to serve as a place where you could actually sit, sit to enjoy, but also sit to plant so that you don’t have to be bending over constantly into this like four inch to six inch low platform. For instance, in a raised bed or in a, in earth or whatever, because that gets a little harder. So at least you could always like operate on that, that area. Or creating like large spaces where you could move through, more easily move through, I think is important. And in your own home, [00:18:00] not to have so many plants that it becomes impossible for you to take care of or you can’t move. I mean, how many of us have like had too many plants in our home and it’s like hard for you to like get a book off your shelf or like move around. If you drop something and then you have to kind of pick it up and everything along those lines.
So just keeping it accessible. And accessible might mean like one or two plants. It doesn’t have to mean like 50 or a hundred plants or anything along those lines. And it might be just like smaller pots, smaller places, maybe around something that’s accessible, like on a window sill or something of that nature. Have a designated table for things, and maybe having like stacker totes or things that are easy to kind of move in and out in order to be able to place your potting medium and things along those lines. And, and thinking about it from that perspective versus like going over the top and overboard where it becomes unmanageable and you feel even more unable to do things because of the way that you’ve structured your environment.
[00:18:55] Cultivating Green Spaces as a Society
Kenny Coogan: All right, now I wanna take like the 10,000 foot view of green spaces [00:19:00] as a society. I just got back from Japan, and the city’s trolley tracks. Lush, lush, green grass. Because the trolleys only over a specific area, every like 7 to 12 minutes. And when they’re not there, all these wild birds would fly down and eat the worms and play in the grass. And there was just so many vertical plant walls in the city, like multiple cities that we visited. So can you maybe talk about why it’s important for not just individuals, but the society to cultivate green spaces?
Summer Rayne Oakes: One of the pieces that I’ve written in my book, How to Make a Plant Love You, is my experience in going to Singapore, which you know, is like, they tout it as like a city in the garden, and they want everybody within 10 minutes of, of green space or walking space.
It was very interesting to see like open air buildings. I mean, obviously they have a very different climate than we do. They’re almost like right on the equator. And I think in Japan it also probably depends on where you [00:20:00] are. Cuz in some parts of Japan, it’s closer to the northern hemisphere and other parts it might be a little less so.
To answer your question about like the importance of it. I mean, you feel the difference. You feel the difference, like when we went to Singapore, you could feel the difference of seeing like buildings, building scapes, like have green on it or, you know, even if we go, if I walk the old universities here, you know, I’m, I’m right next to an Ivy League University. And part of the reason it’s called an Ivy League is they have all these old, you know, stone buildings with ivy growing up on it. And it’s so beautiful. Like there’s, the open spaces are really inviting. We were just up towards Geneva and we, you have this big courtyard that’s just like the open green space and it, and you’re surrounded by like all these amazing buildings and it feels like you’re just protected. It’s like the, the landscape’s giving you a hug.
And I think that we don’t think about that very much. A lot of the stuff that you know, I see out there, especially with strip malls and everything is like they–
Kenny Coogan: Abandoned strip malls.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Yeah, [00:21:00] abandoned strip malls. Or places like where you might go and go to the big box stores like for instance. And they’ll like plant in a few columnar trees and a few hedges and they’d heavily mulch it and then they have sidewalks and that’s a, they call it a day. And it’s very uninspiring. It’s uninspiartional. And you know how you feel like when you walk through a botanic gardens or through spaces that have curated something and are interesting to look at. You’d much rather walk down maybe a treeline street than one with not, and just kind of asphalt.
And so I think we don’t place an emphasis on beauty as much as we maybe used to. We don’t place an emphasis on how we might actually feel in spaces. It becomes much more of a transactional environment, especially when you have like developers who are coming in and they, they wanna keep it within budget. Oftentimes the idea of a landscape is an afterthought and not like a forethought. And so when you see really [00:22:00] well planned places and cities that feel really human scale, oftentimes they’re knitted into a natural environment. And that makes people feel like there’s a sense of place and there’s a sense of calm there that typically there might not be.
Kenny Coogan: When I saw those trolley tracks with turf growing in them, I thought like, yes, of course we should be growing something green to reduce that heat island effect in cities. Like that’s such an easy no-brainer. The wild birds can benefit.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Yeah. And actually that was one of the big research results that were in Singapore. They have I think like eight degrees from the equator or something of that nature, and they have massive heat island effect. So they went out and they pounded the pavement, so to speak, and started to do a research and asking people. Well, what do you prefer for, to deal with heat island effect.
And so they had all these queries of like plants on buildings, plant spaces, cool bus terminals, like all [00:23:00] these types of stuff like where you have like AC bus terminals. And the vast majority of people picked green, greenery. And I think that is important to note that a lot of folks enjoy the greenery. You walk on a treelined street, it might be 10 degrees cooler at the end of the day. We go walk into a forest and we were talking about like how much cooler it is when you walk into the forest. And it’s much more pleasant to actually work in the forest during the heat of the summer than it is in like the meadow for instance, where there’s no trees.
Those are things I think that unfortunately are like afterthoughts. And again, having people to care for spaces. We got onto our land here at Flock. Outdoors, people hadn’t been here for two years, meaning they weren’t taking care of the land. And nature really does take over too. So I think when, part of the reason why sometimes landscapes are considered an afterthought is because they don’t have the proper people to take care of them. Some people might consider it work or at least time spent. And I’m not saying work [00:24:00] is a bad thing. I think sometimes when we say work, people think like, oh, it’s work, you know, and they have this, you know, J-O-B mentality. It’s a job.
But I really love going out into the garden and actually working, like I’m actually designing a, a little space that I wanna convert into like a little gravel garden. Just being out there and like, you know, organizing the stepping stones and all this other kind of stuff, like you see it transform and you kind of see the vision come together and you’re like, oh, you know, it’s so neat to be able to see a space transform. Pulling up lawn and being able to create like a pollinator garden and not seeing just like bare grass, but like, a beautiful garden that changes over the course of many months is like so pleasant.
So I think that, folks have to kind of come to terms with the fact that like there’s so much in the beauty of landscape and design and walkability and all that type of stuff. And we just, we just don’t have a 30,000 foot approach to like land planning. If you’ve ever traveled through a town and all of a sudden [00:25:00] there’s like, it’s like so well, not well planned, and you’re like, this is weird. And like people plop all these different buildings everywhere and it, it doesn’t, it doesn’t look cohesive in any kind of way. And it’s, it’s because there was no land planning, there was no building planning. Everybody just like wanted to create their own little idea on their little plot of Earth, which is totally fine. But when you go to places that have been really planned out and are thoughtful in their approach and thoughtful within the landscape, it’s like night and day.
[00:25:30] Learning from Botanical Gardens
Kenny Coogan: You’ve had the privilege of traveling to many different botanical gardens and cities. And you received private tours of many collections ranging from carnivorous plants to cacti and philodendrons to ferns. In regards to sustainability, what have these tours taught you?
Summer Rayne Oakes: Well, one of the things that I have always been a big proponent of, and that firstly comes to mind, is that I started using integrated pest management in my home. I’m an entomologist by training, so that kind of stuff doesn’t make [00:26:00] me squeamish. I think that was one of the, one of the things that, for when people started getting way too many plants in their homes, that was one of the things that I feel like I, I helped bring to people is the idea of integrated pest management in the home versus like using like any type of insecticides or anything like that.
Even neem, like even though neem is natural, it gives me such a headache actually using it. So I’m not saying that everybody may feel that way, but I definitely get a headache from actually using it. I think it’s quite strong. And it’s not even like real neem oil. Like a lot of the neem horticultural sprays that you get isn’t, isn’t even using the Azadirachtin in it.
But one of the things that I got from botanic gardens is a lot of the botanic gardens use integrated pest management too. Many of the botanic gardens that I go to, they very rarely will use like a systemic pesticide. It has to be a very special case or condition for many of the botanic gardens to use a systemic pesticide.
But because people are working in the environment and walking, the public’s in, in the environment all the time, [00:27:00] that many of the botanic gardens that I spoke to, I was surprised that they had used integrated pest management. And this is from all over. And I think that’s really interesting to see like how they actually use that.
I think also botanic gardens, you know, they have a special place wherever they are, they often do some type of conservation in their area of specific plants that may be near threatened or threatened or endangered. And so it’s always interesting to be able to see like what their role is that they play within the environment that they’re at. And obviously not every city or every, you know, place has their own botanic gardens. But those places often have some roles to play in that as well.
The, the thing that I thought is a real value that I offered on my YouTube channel, Plant One On Me, is that in many cases, botanic gardens have research collections or these private collections that they don’t open up to the public. And it’s because they are, they serve as research [00:28:00] collections or they might not open up to the public because they’re too special of plants and they don’t want them being pilfered or taken away or touched or anything along those lines.
And that was one thing I feel like Plant One on Me is able to do, is to bring some of those collections, so those like private behind the scenes tours of like say the Dionisia collection was like one that came to mind. We happened to be in the Netherlands, right the day before, the day they took over the Pelargonium collection from a university that was about to get rid of the Pelargonium collection, which are, you know, geraniums. That was really spectacular because we were able to show that, and that would never be open to the public. The Cycad collection in Thailand. They’re producing like millions of cycad and they have many different rare and cycad species that, again, are not open to the public. And we were able to actually show those collections so that it educates people without it being open to the public. And I think those are really precious tours, [00:29:00] for instance, and things that botanic gardens do, do. But we might not actually even be aware to that extent.
Kenny Coogan: I worked at zoos and aquariums for about 10 years, and one of the zoos had a three story tropical rainforest, and they were having some pest problems on their plants, and they released a hundred anoles, those green lizards from Carolinas, into the rainforest to take care of the pest. And I thought that was so cool. Now, of course, some of the. Exhibit birds and monkeys did snack on the lizards, but it was integrated. It was very interesting that I think it should be advertised to the public like, hey, you probably like these tropical plants. You probably wanna have ’em in your house, but you might get a pest.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Yeah, I mean, I actually was in a botanic garden that brings to mind. But they actually had to become a zoo because they brought in integrated pest management but not in insects. They brought it in with, in the form of [00:30:00] birds and frogs and stuff. So, because they actually had those now within the conservatory. And they found that people stayed in the conservatory longer. Because they’re like, Ooh, I hear a sound. What is that? And they would look for it. And so they would stay in the conservatory and see like the frog within the bromeliad, for instance. So even though they were using the frogs as pest control as well, it was, it was also serving as a way to educate people and to keep people within the conservatory, which I thought was really interesting.
So, yeah, so there’s, there’s ways to do it. And that was in, in a, a place within Europe, and it was in the Netherlands. I remember them saying that they had to actually become a zoo in order to be able to harbor those animals.
[00:30:40] Individuals and Plant Conservation
Kenny Coogan: As individuals who are growing houseplants, do you see individuals playing a role in plants conservation?
Summer Rayne Oakes: I would hope so. I would hope that people get interested in plants enough they feel compelled to want to be able to save them. I think that sometimes we’re in a [00:31:00] space where people want to have plants that are rare and they’ll do anything in order to have them. And that’s like the opposite end of the spectrum, where it’s not about plant conservation, it’s about plant hoarding. And that’s something that we kind of discussed on one of my podcasts that I’ve done on called, called “Bad Seeds,” and we talk about plant theft and plant smuggling. And this could be anything from like, people at botanic gardens taking snips and grabbing things to going on a nursery tour and like taking things that you’re not supposed to, to actually going out in the wild and like taking rare plants outta the wild, which I think is a huge no-no. Especially from a standpoint of like, you don’t know what you’re actually pulling out of the environment and you’re taking away like all the services that that plant provides. And it could range from everything from being a specialist pollinator to being able to stop erosion within the, the landscape or anything along [00:32:00] those lines.
I would hope that the, the result would be, I really love plants. I’d like to, I might not even be able to see these plants in the wild, but I, I value them in the wild. And so I would, I would like to be, become involved or contribute, be be a contributor or help educate the public about these things.
And that’s what we try to do also within like our, in the context of like the YouTube videos that we produce, the podcasts that I produce. I talk about it a lot like within my book and you know, what I’m trying to do on an everyday basis. Even just kind of bringing in native plants that I would think would be in the landscape that aren’t here. And being able to basically introduce that, those genetics into the landscape I think is really important as well.
[00:32:42] Sustainability and Fashion
Kenny Coogan: I wanted to ask you about fashion and how fashion can be sustainable. During college when you were studying natural resources and entomology, you started modeling, and you were bestowed the title of the World’s First Eco Model by Grist Magazine. So what [00:33:00] exactly is a eco model?
Summer Rayne Oakes: Well, it was a term that I never really took fondly to initially because I thought that it diminished, like the, the work that I was doing within the fashion industry. I really wanted to focus on using it not only as a megaphone to talk about environmental issues that were near and dear to my heart, but also just start to work with brands that were putting like an environmentally conscious or socially conscious foot forward, which was really unique at the time. Cuz we’re talking about like circa 2000, 2004, 2005, that type of stuff. And, I worked in the fashion industry more or less up until probably 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, a little bit? It was a huge part about, about my life and I thought it was always interesting that there weren’t more people kind of doing what I was doing because you’re advertising a product or service. And I feel like if it’s, if it’s not a product or service that you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t [00:34:00] use, like why would you endorse it? Like it just, it seemed a little odd to me, but I didn’t grow up in the industry. And I think some people just view it as a job and they don’t have to like the product or whatever. They just have to go out and promote it.
But I just never saw the industry to be like that. So when I entered in the fashion industry, it was under the premise of wanting to connect environmental issues to a wider audience. I didn’t go into the fashion industry to be a fashion model. I went into the industry with a, a very specific goal of communicating environmental awareness.
Kenny Coogan: And how can listeners who wanna be more sustainable in environmental, in their clothing and beauty regimens, where do they begin?
Summer Rayne Oakes: This goes for any product. So, I, I just think like fashion and beauty is, is something that is really close to our skin or on our skin, for instance. And I would always recommend for people to look at ingredients at the, at the very least. Something I, you know, I think [00:35:00] when there’s a lot of new mothers, for instance, they’re like, I only want organic cotton on my baby’s skin. And no harsh dyes or anything like that. Or people start to look into things like that when you have like a, a, a neonate or like a newborn or something like that.
But you don’t have to wait to get pregnant and have a kid in order to like, you know, have an environmental conscious attitude. That’s what I’d like to to say to folks. But, but yeah, I mean, being more aware and, and mindful about like where your products come from. I love to support like local brands or smaller brands or things along those lines. And then people that have like a sense of story that’s associated with the, the clothing that they might make. And sometimes even more so than necessarily the fibers that they’re using, which I do look into that as well. Even these bedsheets that I’m like sitting next to right now, I mean, they’re linen, like linen sheets. I like, I kind of like more of the natural fibers and the natural approach. I think even more so now than maybe I did when I was when I was younger. I’ve grown to appreciate that kind of, that stuff.
I’ve grown to appreciate workmanship as well. [00:36:00] So not necessarily of like having retail therapy all the time and going to the mall and going to this and buying online everything all at once. Just like you have an heirloom plant, like having an heirloom piece of clothing.
Kenny Coogan: Durable, long lasting.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Yeah. It kinda sounds hokey, but like, I hate when I get a jacket or something and the buttons are not sewed on well. And I’m like, that’s really not a well-made piece of clothing.
Kenny Coogan: And sometimes it’s designed to be.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Yeah, it’s designed to be like disposable. But you know, I have a pair of overalls that I’ve had for like the last seven years. I, I still have clothes that I wear from when I was in high school like that I still have.
Kenny Coogan: So do I.
Summer Rayne Oakes: And, and I actually have like this old jacket that I cannot get rid of, that was my mother’s uncle’s jacket. It fits me fine, but it’s like ripped in so many places. But like, I love it. And it’s a great corduroy. It serves the purpose still. I very much, relish in a well-made product. And it doesn’t have to be clothes. It could be [00:37:00] ceramics, it could be anything like, I’d rather have something that’s nice and well-made that I could cherish and will cherish for a long time, and that will retain its value. That’s another thing. I would go to vintage shops and things along those lines, and you see the craftsmanship and the quality of clothes that were done in the fifties compared to what was maybe done in the nineties or the aughts. And you’re like, it’s like night and day. It’s something that will retain its value over time and that, you know, you’ll be able to like wash and or dry clean or something like that and maintain, and still keep its quality and craftsmanship. And so those I think are things that I think are really underserved and not really discussed as much as should be.
And then personal care products, I think it comes really down to a lot of ingredients that you use. You know, a lot of our personal care products are not necessarily things that you would want on your skin, especially over the course of time. A lot of my research when I was in university centered around not, not only personal care products, but like what we actually [00:38:00] wash our clothes in and detergents, for instance. And we, we were finding that some of the detergents, even though they might have chemistry in them that seems innocuous and seems not harmful to the environment, when it actually gets into the wastewater treatment streams, things like nonylphenols, for instance, NPs, they’re called for short, which are detergents and act as like a surfactant. So the things that make things sudsy. They become carcinogenic on the way out, and it just is like a chemical concoction mixing in our wastewater treatment plants. And those are things that we really think of.
If you’re on a septic, for instance, for all of us who are actually on septics, you think about these things because you’re not just putting it into the centralized wastewater treatment plant where it’s just going away. With a septic, you’re actually keeping it on your land, and you have to clean that out every, like, whatever, 2, 3, 4 years, maybe you could push it, depending on how many times you use it. But you don’t want to be putting chemicals and weird stuff like down your drains. [00:39:00] I wish people had that kind of sensibility when it comes to things, when it’s done at scale as well.
So those are, those are the things that I would kind of like recommend to folks when you’re thinking about those things.
[00:39:12] The “Bad Seeds” Podcast
Kenny Coogan: Your newest project is a podcast called “Bad Seeds.” Why did you wanna tell stories of the black market as it relates to plants?
Summer Rayne Oakes: Well, this was something that was actually brought to my attention more so by a, a friend named Liz who runs a awesome plant shop in Baltimore called B. Willow. She’s very good at being able to like research a lot of, a lot of these issues and try to exercise proper sourcing and whatnot within her own store. Like she just wants to be able to reflect her values, like in her store. She actually made the New York Times not too long ago, maybe two or three years ago because plant crime was on the rise. There was much more plant smuggling, especially I think also during the [00:40:00] pandemic, it began to rise even more because I think lots of countries’ economies started to close down and people started to look for alternative ways to make money.
She actually donated a percentage of her proceeds at the store back towards plant conservation for the cactus and succulents plant specialist group. And there was an issue where they had caught this man smuggling, I believe he was in Italy, a number of Copiapoa cacti from Chile. They could not get the cacti back to Chile because they couldn’t, they needed to raise like something insignificant . And they couldn’t get the, they were gonna incinerate the cacti. And she’s like, I cannot believe that. And she was able to donate a percentage of her profits from her store. And the story was like, that was enough in order to be able to get some of those cacti back to Chile. And she’s like, I can’t believe how little needs to happen in order to be able to get some of these plants back into the environment. And you would hope that you don’t have [00:41:00] to spend money in that kind of capacity.
But, you know, plant crime is one of the largest crimes in the, in the world. When people don’t think about it, we think about like maybe arms and drugs and things like that. But plants are up there. And if you’ve ever tried to “smuggle” a plant back into a different country, like they won’t let you. Like, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely up there with drugs and guns and wildlife parts and all that other type of stuff.
So one of the things I think was just, you know, being able to raise this awareness and it was a topic that I had covered on Plant One On Me a couple different times. But, it involves a lot more research. And oftentimes when you’re just running the YouTube channel by yourself, you know, you’re telling the stories, you’re editing, you’re producing it, you’re doing all that kind of stuff, and you’re uploading it, putting it on, writing about it, all that other type of things. And it’s hard to be able to do all of that, especially when you give it the time that you need.
So I was approached by a production company who wanted to do more of that, and I was like, this is really an [00:42:00] opportunity to be able to discuss this more and to share it more with the world, because it’s definitely something that’s under-reported. Even when you look at plant conservation, even though the vast majority of plants are more endangered than say, like animals, for instance, they do not get that money in the conservation budget. Because plants are often overlooked, even though it’s the crux of our ecosystems and what animals and, and everybody else relies on.
So this was an opportunity to be able to do it in a way, in a very compelling way, that ties in the popularity of like true crime, for instance, but together with plants, which I think is also having its moment in the public as well.
[00:42:43] Ethically Sourcing Plants
Kenny Coogan: Plant people, specifically house plant people, can become obsessive with their collections. Like people who “love” animals, many times their addiction makes them want to have them in their homes, and they kind of wanna love them to death. What [00:43:00] are some ways people can avoid and not support poached or illegally traded plants? What are some red flags?
Summer Rayne Oakes: Well, one of the things that I would just say about the obsessive part first is that I think you have to recognize that within yourself, if you have that kind of personality type. It doesn’t matter what, if it’s stamp collecting or if it’s sugar or if it’s plants or whatever it might be. You have to understand that about yourself and like what, where is the point that you have to like cut yourself off from that, you know, is, is one thing. But I think a lot of the folks who actually like end up purposely poaching and everything along those lines, a lot of folks knowingly are doing it, and oftentimes it’s much more complex than we would let on.
So it’s not necessarily always just that millennial who has a plant who thinks it’s cool, but sometimes it’s somebody who might not need to like put food on the plates of their, their family in a different part of the world, you know? Or it’s somebody that you know is running a drug trade and this is just like ancillary part of the organized [00:44:00] crime, you know, that type of thing.
But from a standpoint of if you’re somebody who’s a plant lover or if you’re a plant aficionado, one of the things that I would share with people, and this is not always the case, but like, buying a plant from somebody that has a nursery license, I think is important. It’s not like a fail safe, but you know, there’s a lot of folks out there who are just kind of like bringing in plants or doing cuttings of plants and everything, and we, they don’t have nursery license.
For those who have a nursery license and have gone through some of the pains of having a nursery license and actually properly like selling plants, like don’t really wanna lose their nursery license. So I would say that’s one thing. If you’re ordering plants from abroad, for instance, you should be doing any type of CITES permits or phytosanitary certificate. And if there’s somebody on the other side who won’t go actually through that process or does that incorrectly, then I would say that’s a big red flag. Trying to purchase through more proper means. So like we see sometimes a lot of plants that shouldn’t be sold on places [00:45:00] like eBay or Etsy or like WhatsApp channels, or even like Facebook, that type of thing. There’s very little regulations when it comes to that, and probably little understanding of whether these plants were taken from the wild or not. And so I think just being cautious and mindful of that.
And also if you’re in, in the market for plants that are unique or interesting, just to actually do some more research about it and make sure that it isn’t a plant that is on the IUCN Red List or like on CITES or anything along those lines. Not, not that every single plant has been looked at from that perspective, but most of the plants that you buy commercially through commercial growers, are not rare plants.
And I think that there’s also more acknowledgement that some of the rare plants, people are interested now in doing tissue culture. So if you start seeing a plant that’s more accessible, oftentimes, sometimes it means that it’s gone through TC labs or tissue culture labs, and that there is now a commercial [00:46:00] grower that’s actually looking into it. I’ve heard, and I cannot corroborate this, but I heard that the Philodendron Spiritus Sancti, which is one of the plants that was a topic of one of our episodes of “Bad Seeds,” is actually now going through tissue culture. But sometimes even that means it’s not gonna be available for multiple years until it actually hits the market. But if that’s the case, then when plants start to become more of a mass appeal, it becomes less interested, at least to collectors because, you know, it doesn’t have the cache any longer.
But that’s one of the strategies I think in being able to flood the market with rare plants. And, and that’s on part of people being able to get ’em into tissue culture and propagating them and all that other type of stuff. So there’s all sorts of things that I think come with it, but I think people need to like look out for people with nursery licenses. That’s probably better if you’re getting something internationally, that making sure that it’s the phytosanitary certificate and they’re properly marking things, that [00:47:00] you’re not getting anything that’s like rare or that’s endangered or threatened, for instance. Or on the IUCN Red List or CITES. And that, you know, you yourself know the plant that you’re getting and that it’s not something that it’s shady. And going through specific means and just being knowledgeable, that when you go on group sites like an Etsy or an eBay or WhatsApp or Facebook Marketplace, that you may find things that are more nefarious than you would like.
Kenny Coogan: And for listeners who wanna learn more about the podcast or YouTube channels or Summer’s website, we have all the links in our show notes. And we wanna thank you so much, Summer Rayne Oakes, for speaking with us. Our conversation on sustainability and houseplants has been very enlightening.
Summer Rayne Oakes: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Kenny.
Kenny Coogan: And we thank you the listener for joining our podcast and encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues, and family. To listen to more podcasts and to learn more, visit our website, www.MotherEarthNews.com. You can also follow our social media platforms from [00:48:00] that link and ask questions for future podcasts. And remember, no matter how brown your thumb is, you can always cultivate kindness.
[00:48:10] Podcast Credits
John Moore: You’ve just heard our episode about sustainability with Summer Rayne Oakes.
You can reach us at Podcast@OgdenPubs.com with any comments or suggestions.
Our podcast production team includes Jessica Mitchell, John Moore, and Kenny Coogan.
Music for this episode is “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw.
This Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications. Learn more about us at www.MotherEarthNews.com.
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Until next time, don’t forget to love your Mother.
Meet Summer Rayne Oakes
Summer Rayne Oakes is a science communicator, conservation activist, and entrepreneur, working on creative solutions to environmental challenges. Summer Rayne started “Plant One On Me” back in February 2017 to help answer houseplant care questions. Since that time, her YouTube channel has expanded in scope and depth, featuring regular episodes that share the beauty of plants with the people who love them. Her mission is to bring people closer to plants by bringing plants closer to them through engaging, entertaining, and educational content.
Additional Resources
Our Podcast Team:
Jessica Mitchell, John Moore, Kenny Coogan, and Alyssa Warner
Music: “Travel Light” by Jason Shaw
Listen to more podcasts at MOTHER EARTH NEWS PODCAST.
Check out the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Bookstore for more resources that may interest you.
Go to the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Fair page for an opportunity to see some of our podcast guests live.
The Mother Earth News and Friends podcasts are a production of Ogden Publications.
Ogden Publications strives to inspire “can-do communities,” which may have different locations, backgrounds, beliefs, and ideals. The viewpoints and lifestyles expressed within Ogden Publications articles are not necessarily shared by the editorial staff or policies but represent the authors’ unique experiences.
